What outplacement did next

The next few years present outplacement consultancies with a once in a generation opportunity to respond to what some commentators have called once in a generation economic conditions.

Outplacement has an opportunity to deliver greater value to individual careers and contribute more positively to the health and success of their clients' organisations.

Working with individuals who have experienced outplacement at various levels illustrates the need for a new process that delivers career long benefits. Academic and customer satisfaction studies over the last few decades highlight this. For example, outplacement is challenged for focusing only on re-employment [Davenport, D. W. (1984). Outplacement counseling: Whither the counselor? Vocational Guidance Quarterly, 32, 185-190] and for having little or no interest in studying the results from the perspective of individual clients [Wooten, K. C. (1996). Predictors of client satisfaction in executive outplacement: Implications for service delivery. Journal of Employment Counseling, 33, 106-116].

More recent studies offer new insights but the example of the challenges above best illustrate the need for innovation in the aims, delivery, results and measurement of quality outplacement services. Why? Because the need for change highlighted in 1984 and 1996 has had enough time to sink in.

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Have you gone through an outplacement process as an individual? Has your company engaged an outplacement consultancy? What were your experiences? What were the results? What were the longer-term outcomes? If you have an opinion please comment here or email me at worklifefusion(at)googlemail(dot)com

Celebrating the decline of the job for life

New US Department of Labor statistics quoted in the previous post continue to reveal more about employee/employer relationships and the career long relationship between individuals and their work. Despite the job and direction changes they expose, it wasn’t too long ago that the phrase ‘a job for life’ was associated with many careers.

Employers and employees took a longer term view of their commitment and it was not uncommon for a 25 or 30 year career to be spent within the same organisation. So why is it now time to celebrate these statistics and welcome the decline of the job for life?

Employers have benefited for some time from more fluidity in the labour market but the advantages to employees are only just beginning to be fully understood. With the ability to exercise choice throughout their career, the average worker has the chance to apply the lessons learned through direct, practical experience in their career decision making. 

This degree of insight into any individual relationship with work is invaluable. For example, a career decision made at 18 years of age might still be relevant at age 35 but if it is not, a more informed choice can be based on the understanding created through 20 years in work.

Interpreting an individual’s values, talents and goals enables such informed choices to be made. Decisions are based on what an individual has learned through their full range of experiences at work, what this qualifies them to do and what they are motivated to do in the future.

The decline of the job for life has created the opportunity for more individuals to pursue personal success. This in turn can create a greater number of successful and meaningful relationships with work. A reason to celebrate indeed.

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to the first post on this new blog! I am completely new to posting (and hosting for that matter!) but have enjoyed reading blogs so much that I felt compelled to join in and start writing.

There is plenty to be found on the web already under the headings of work, career and job satisfaction but the writing and opinion pieces I find most interesting are something of a minority view at this time. The title of this blog reflects just one of the differences that is part of a new discussion and approach in this area. To start, I'll offer up a couple of definitions:

work/life fusion: understanding an individual's values, talents and goals and applying them to the pursuit of personal success.

and for all of us who aren't nuclear physicists

fusion: when two or more things join or combine.

The work/life fusion concept grew from a closer study of the work/life balance principle. In my current and previous professions, work/life balance has been a very useful, often laudable principle but, on closer examination, there may be a fundamental flaw in its reasoning.

Work/life balance separates 'work' and, for want of a better phrase, 'non-work'. Having made this separation work/life balance then sets us forward in a continual struggle to equalise the two. The fusion hypothesis argues that, in doing this, work/life balance essentially creates opposition. It goes on to suggest that where such an opposition is used to support reasoning, it can lead to one side feeling compromised or suppressed, especially at moments of critical decision (e.g. promotion, relocation, career change and so on). 

Regardless of how much we would like it to happen, we can't send someone else to work in our place and, because you are the same person who leaves the house in the morning and returns home later that day, work/life fusion looks at the individual in the singular, the individual as a whole.

In taking this approach, work/life fusion suggests that all of our individual priorities (decisions, behaviours, motivations, rewards and actions) can be interpreted using the same set of values. It also argues that when this set of values is trained and tested (i.e. underpinned by a greater degree of outward and inward knowledge, reliance and direction) the resulting change in our relationship with work can edge us all closer to a vocation and/or closer to our individual definitions of work/life success.

With the voices of those who comment playing a central role, this blog is intended to apply, explore, test, gather feedback, perspective and opinion on this subject and find out if work/life balance deserves further criticism and if work/life fusion can evolve into something that has genuine relevance to job seekers, employees and employers, today and into the future.

It is up to us, and by 'us' I mean anyone with an opinion (contrary or otherwise), to ask questions and to get the ball rolling. Please feel free to submit general comments or any specific work/career/balance related questions or issues. I will post more on the subject as regularly as possible and look forward to the conversations unfolding.

Here's to success in all our endeavours!

Paul